I Get a Break This Week!

Our Executive Presbyter has offered to come and preach here just to give me a break after our local disaster a few weeks ago. We've been working pretty hard around here to offer what aid we can and so I've had a few (she says sarcastically) extra responsibilities around here. Have I mentioned that I don't have a secretary at this church?
So I get a week without sermon prep. Of course, I should probably use this chance to start looking ahead, something I don't usually have the chance to do much of.
Then there's vacation. I have officially purchased the plane tickets. Ontario, here we come! Gotta leave the spouse behind; he doesn't have enough vacation accrued at the new job yet. I hate that for him, as he needs it more than any of us right now. His new job is horrible as far as vacation time 8 days! and no personal or sick leave!!!) and not to mention they sorta fibbed about what he'd been hired to do. I have to admit that I love the vacation time that we pastors get. I suppose we need it though or we'd all go nuts.

Long time, no post

I didn't realize that my last post had been the day of the infamous happening. I suppose I've wanted to post a few times about that, but it would be a little bit too telling for what is supposed to be a rather anonymous blog. We've recovered well from said happening; life is returning to whatever passes for normal in our house.
I've been neck-deep in confirmation the past several weeks. We do not have the time or resources to do a year long study, so we have developed our own curriculum to do in 10-12 weeks. It's a small group of kids, so this works pretty well. We meet for two hours each week and they seem like they are getting most of what we're teaching. Of course, there is plenty of repetition, they are only 13 after all.
P had a great b-day. I surprised him with a party at a friend's house. I even surprised him with his gift that I had convinced him he wasn't getting. (An electric guitar pedal--that he is super-de-duper psyched about, I might add.)
I'm starting a bible study group this week that I'm modeling after one I co-created in ATL. It only meets twice a month, Fri. evenings in a coffee shop. Aimed at my generation and a little older, though I'm getting a surprising # of my retirees saying they want to come. Cool!! It is going to focus on faith and culture. We'll be using a lot of the "Thoughtful Christian" material and some of the other shorter studies that focus on faith as it relates to our world, politics, media, etc. So I guess it's not technically a Bible study, it'll be more of a faith study. I'm excited to get it started. It's the sort of things that feeds my faith too, so even though I'm leading (at least the first one) I will still be able to renew my spirit.

Great News!!

Well, if you've kept up with my dilema, you know I recently had only one church that had contacted me so far about pursuing a call. Well, no longer!! I got contacted today by Church Much Nearer to My Family, and it's in a city where P can almost certainly find a job and not have a monster commute. I believe his company actually has an office in this city, so he could just transfer. This is so good, because the longer I have to think about it, the more I'm thinking my childhood issues with poor, small towns could be a big problem if I tried to work in an even smaller and poorer town than the ones I grew up in. I'm still open to a face-to-face interview, but, well, this new opportunity is really the kind I was hoping for all along, good for the entire family, I think.
If any of you have had an experience where you've had to choose between a job that is more certain, and waiting for a call that is less so, I'd love to hear about it and the outcome.